Rudd will pay for voodoo politics
Michael Costa
The Australian
June 01, 2010
ONE of the critical issues at the next federal election will be the character of Kevin Rudd.
After a string of broken promises, the public is asking: is the Prime Minister believable? Is he to be trusted? Does he believe in anything other than himself?
Simon Benson's new book, Betrayal, sheds light on this issue. I and others involved in the attempt to privatise sections of the power industry in NSW to fund an ambitious transport plan have known the answer to these questions for quite a while.
We have been constrained in commenting on these issues because the principal victim of Rudd's failure to display the character one would expect from a national political leader of substance remained quiet.
Morris Iemma's public exposure of the promise Rudd made to him before the previous federal election and his failure to deliver is timely and important in assessing Rudd's character. The revelations will rightly influence the next federal election.
Alan Jones, Costa & Iemma
At a personal level these events are a kind of political morality tale. On one side is Iemma, an honourable man who was motivated by a misguided but strongly held belief in labour solidarity and doing the right thing by the ALP. On the other side is Rudd, a person who made a promise and consequently accrued benefits without reciprocating when he was required to do so. It is about the selflessness and selfishness. It is about character.
Despite claims yesterday by former left-wing deputy premier John Watkins, leading figures in the Iemma state government were well aware of Rudd's promise.
Unfortunately for Watkins and the dysfunctional ALP machine's predictable attempts to place responsibility for the failure on me and my negotiating style, Iemma's revelations finally provide a context. The "Costa won't negotiate", "Costa refused to do a deal" and "Costa is mad" myths no doubt will give comfort to the cabal of self-interested incompetents that brought down a popularly elected premier and replaced him with an inexperienced and ultimately disastrous leader in Nathan Rees.
Those seeking a fuller explanation of the failed strategy now have the missing facts. These facts are critical in understanding the government's approach. The historians can fight over their interpretation of these facts. But they cannot be ignored.
The fallout from this disastrous episode of labour history remains.
What are left are unsettled disputes about the relationship between the union base and the parliamentary ALP, and questions about the role of the traditionally anonymous ALP machine in policy formulation.
Ray Hadley talks to Simon Benson
In a broader sense, the failed electricity strategy in NSW provides an insight into the contest that has been occurring in Australian party politics between politicians who believe ideas and policy are the core of politics, and those politicians who believe winning elections at any cost is the measure of success.
The latter group illogically rules out the possibility that you can do the right thing in policy terms and still win elections.
The win-at-any-cost politicians appear to be more interested in the benefits and trappings of office than undertaking diligently the responsibilities of office.
The new machine men think politics is as simple as borrowing techniques and strategies from the product marketing textbook. Politicians are now brands that can be subjected to brand management techniques. In their mind the same techniques used to sell soap powder can be equally successful in selling brand Rudd. It's a kind of voodoo politics that has turned techniques such as focus groups and polling on their head. Instead of using information derived from these techniques to adapt the message around a well-thought-out policy, they use these techniques to develop a policy.
One of the consequences of this type of voodoo politics has been a dramatic change in the status of politicians.The rise in modern political techniques is strongly correlated with the decline in public confidence in politicians.
Political spin and media management eventually catch up with a government. In Rudd's case the speed of this catch-up has been truly dramatic.
Rudd is still advised by the same people who brought down the Iemma government.
The irony is that despite their obsession with brand management techniques, their application of these techniques has been as poor as the Rudd government's administration of its stimulus packages. They've taken brand Rudd from a market share of more than 70 per cent in the last quarter to less than 50 per cent in this quarter.
If they really were in marketing, they would have been sacked for this result. The Prime Minister has only himself to blame for the mess his government confronts. What should be dawning on Rudd is that by reneging on his commitment to Iemma, he also has crippled his own re-election agenda.
The Labor Party is now dysfunctional, particularly in electorally vulnerable NSW.
If Rudd had honoured his promise to Iemma, he would have had a cashed-up state government delivering much needed infrastructure. Rudd had the political authority, after he decisively won the federal election, to deliver on his promise.
He chose to put his political popularity before the policy position. He chose to take the advice of machine men.
These same machine men no doubt are closely watching the opinion polls and planning to politically execute him if his standing in the polls continues to decline.
If this occurs, as in all good morality tales, he will have brought this on himself for not having the character to honour his promise to Iemma.
Michael Costa is a former treasurer of NSW.
Lu Kewen aka. Beijing’s highest ranking official in Australia,Australian PM Kevin Rudd, simply cannot be trusted.
Six years of HARD LABOR ? No Way.
Column - The greatest liar in the Lodge
Andrew Bolt
Daily Telegraph
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
I CAN’T recall when I first knew I could never trust Kevin Rudd to tell the truth.
Was it when he claimed he and his widowed mum were thrown out of their home by a heartless landlord?
Was it when he said he had a memory blank about his night at Scores?
Perhaps it was when he said during the ABC’s cricket coverage he remembered as a 17-year-old standing at the Gabba to watch Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson tear into the English.
He remembered the crowd chanting “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if Thommo don’t get you, then Lillee must”, but even more clearly he remembered 42-year-old Colin Cowdrey bravely walking on to the field and shaking the hand of Thomson.
But “Ashes to ashes” was never a chant, and Cowdrey didn’t play in Brisbane, joining the tour in Perth.
Maybe I’m wrong to seize on such small stuff, or mean to object that he said “sorry” to a “stolen generations” no one can find. Another lie.
But it’s clear the public is also belatedly catching on. In fact, Rudd’s credibility is now shot to pieces.
He was fatally damaged already, having falsely claimed global warming was “the great moral and economic challenge of our time”, only to drop his emissions trading scheme when it got too hard.
But last week finished him off, and even left him exposed to what in normal times is a crime in politics - misleading Parliament. Rudd was accused, credibly, by former NSW premier Morris Iemma and treasurer Michael Costa of having lied when he told Iemma before the last federal election to postpone his plans to sell the state’s electricity assets until Rudd won office, when they’d then join to “f---” the unions. After the election, Rudd welched on that deal.
But more terrible for his reputation have been the deceits to justify his effective embezzlement of $38 million of taxpayers’ money to pay for political advertising for his troubled “super profits” tax on miners.
In how many ways has Rudd again shown his word to be worthless?
He promised before the election to ban such advertising, which he called “a cancer” and gave an “absolute 100 per cent guarantee” the auditor-general would have to approve such spending.
But the auditor-general has been sacked from that job, and Rudd has dipped into your pockets for the very same kind of “cancer”.
To excuse himself, Rudd had Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig last week offer two reasons for an exemption for “extremely urgent action”. And both reasons were frauds.
First, claimed Ludwig, there was “co-ordinated misinformation about the changes (which) is currently being promulgated in paid advertising”, which means the ads by miners.
But Rudd has since been forced to admit he’d approved the cash for these ads as long ago as April 20, weeks before the mining industry ran any of its own.
Ludwig’s second excuse was even dodgier: that the ads were needed since this new tax “involves changes to the value of some capital assets, they impact on financial markets”.
Uh, oh. Ludwig had contradicted what Rudd told Parliament the day before, when he denied his tax plan had hurt the markets: “Share prices around the world have fallen because of the crisis in Greece.”
Costa now asks: “Is the Prime Minister believable? Is he credible? ... This bloke has lost the public.”
He lost me long ago. Now I cannot think of a bigger liar to hold his high office.
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